Lillyfield Academy's First Year - Bonus - Baby Bump!!!!

 Our students having a great time dancing after the Final Assembly

It’s really hard to believe, but our first year at Lillyfield Academy has come to a close.  It’s also so hard to believe that it has been so long since I have posted anything here.  Please forgive me.  The school pretty much consumed me full time and I found that I never got a chance to catch my breath let alone write a post.  Now that we have a break, I have a bit of a chance to do both.

To celebrate the end of the year we had a Final Assembly on the last day of school.  It was a fun time to enjoy everyone's success in the past year. 

Me giving the welcome address at our Final Assembly

 Students praying during Final Assembly

Our school committee

 Class Nursery saying nursery rhymes with the help of some Class 2 and 3 students

 All our students singing some action songs

 Giving awards to the students

This year went really well.  We had 16 students in Classes Nursery-3.  The students came in knowing little English, misbehaving (mostly because they didn’t understand anything), and at first I felt like there was no way they were going to learn anything.  Slowly they started understanding, I started to figure out HOW to teach (this is my first time really teaching anything), and in the end they all made really good progress.  We had two AMAZING teachers to help me out.  They are both well experienced in teaching school in India which was awesome since I had only ever experienced school in the west.  We were so blessed to have them with us this year.  They came to us after much prayer and after our school year had already started, but it is clear to see that God provided us with exactly the people we needed for the job.  They did an incredible job this year and have assured us that they will be teaching with us again next year as well!

 Our awesome teachers - Reena Miss and Sabina Miss

One of the main comments we received from parents and others is how good the students’ English is.  Students in other English schools learn English, but are often hesitant to use it outside of school and would have great difficulty conversing with someone from the west because their classes are taught by non-native English speakers.  Our students, however, gained confidence in their English skills through much listening and use at school.  They also got exposed to a wide variety of accents as our other two teachers are non-native English speakers.  We have several reports of our students talking with each other in English outside of school in their play and as they are walking to and from school.  Such a good sign of their success!  

One of the other main comments we received was how much the students improved in their Nepali reading and writing skills.  This, of course, is something that I can take NO credit for.  Our other two teachers did a fantastic job teaching Nepali to our students and the students’ parents really took notice of the improvement. 

This year was one for me to observe and understand the culture and traditions in schooling over here so that we might improve on some things which are lacking while not throwing out those things which are already done well.  School over is quite different than in the west.  The main difference is that students learn primarily by memorizing questions and answers (that the teachers give them) so that they can rewrite the answers word for word on the exam.  At first to us westerners this looks like a terrible way to learn, but I’ve come to realize that, while it certainly has its downsides, the memory capacity of the students over here is absolutely incredible.  I have seen student memorize dozens of full paragraphs of information and write it exactly word for word.  The drawbacks, however, are clear once you ask them to explain what it means or to come up with their own answers to questions – for the most part, they can’t!    My goal is not to make our school entirely ‘western’ but to implement some of the methods we use in the west to help students with English comprehension and with their reasoning and critical thinking skills.  I hope to slowly, over the next few years, begin to make slight changes to the way things are done.  Hopefully we will, at some point, achieve a happy mix of the two styles.  

Our goals for next year are to continue to give our students good-quality education while hopefully being able to grow our school.  This year our school went from Class Nursery to Class 3 and we hope to add Class 4 next year.  We need more students to be able to continue to pay our bills, so we are praying that God would provide us with all the students we need, but not more than we can handle :)

  

Aside from all the school work we have been busy with, we’ve also been cooking up something else.  As of now I’m 29 weeks pregnant and we hope to be welcoming our baby Sherpa sometime at the beginning of March 2015!!!!  This has certainly been a busy year for us!  The pregnancy is going well and I haven’t been sick or had any other complications.  I was able to finish out the school year with no problems and hope to teach the first week or so of the next school year as well, providing I’m still feeling good in February.  We don’t know if it’s a boy or girl since it’s illegal here to find out the gender, but we’re SO excited and can’t wait to meet our little son or daughter!

Me and Baby Sherpa at 29 weeks!!!

Well, that’s pretty much what has been going on over here!  Thank you to all of you who have helped with our school through donations, encouragement, prayer, etc.  We really appreciate it and are so thankful to each and every one of you!  We would greatly appreciate your prayers for the coming school year as well as for the new addition to our family.  Thank you!

Constructing Lillyfield Academy

January has been a bit of a whirlwind for us over here – especially the last couple of weeks.  We started out the new year thinking we were going to be able to get into the building for our new school and start fixing things up to be ready for school to start mid-February.  Well, things really didn’t work out quite like that.  We kept waiting and waiting for the building to open up, and (to make a very long story very short) it just never did.   We had school uniforms already purchased, books on the way, parents wanting to send their children to our school, but no school building.  But God has been so faithful to us throughout this whole process, and just when we needed it, He gave Passang the idea to build the school on top of our house. 

Our house is two stories with an unfinished roof that we were hoping to one day make into another story.  It used to be the place where everyone would hang their clothes up to dry.  Now we have three school rooms up there!  It is really amazing how quickly this all has happened.  We only started construction on January 15^th.

The first step in the process was for Passang to go cut down bamboo.  We decided to make the walls out of bamboo because it is much cheaper than brick and we don’t have a whole lot of money for this.  Passang cut down almost 500 pieces of bamboo from one of our relative’s land and then carried it all back to our house.  Our awesome nephew, Sanjay, has been using his winter holiday to help him out every day. 

Our bamboo

Then we had workers pound the bamboo flat so that it could be woven into sheets.

Flattened bamboo ready to be woven.

Workers first outlined the entire structure of the school in a couple layers of brick.  This will help keep rain water out of the classrooms. 

One of the workers laying brick.

Workers laying brick.  The building in the background is Passang's mother's house.  The bottom of her house is basically level with the top of ours.  We plan on using the two rooms on the bottom of her house as additional classrooms for our school.

The brick "outline" of our school!

They then began framing the classrooms with wood.  All of the wood comes very rough and has to be cut and planed by hand first before it can be used.

My brother-in-law trimming some wood down.

Framing the school.

The flattened bamboo was then woven into sheets to be used as the walls.  It’s really quite pretty when it’s all done! 

Passang helping on of the workers weave the bamboo

Passang's step-father and one of the workers weaving bamboo.

Passang's step-father pounding the bamboo to get the weaves tighter.

Workers taking a break in front of a finished sheet of woven bamboo.

The sheets of woven bamboo had to be cut down to size to fit each wall, and the windows had to be cut out.

They were then attached to the wooden frame, leaving openings for doors.  

Passang trimming a bamboo sheet.

Bamboo attached to the framing

To finish it off, wood “beading” is nailed to the bamboo on the opposite side of the frame to kind of sandwich the bamboo in place.

Passang with the finished rooms!

The man who owns some of the fields next to our house is letting us rent one of his fields from him to use as our playground.  Passang has been busy clearing this field to get it ready. 

They had to cut down all of the bushes and dig out several stands of bamboo.

Passang and his brother-in-law clearing bamboo.

Passang climbing a tree to cut some vines down.

Then they had to cut down a few trees.

Timber!

Passang cutting up the limbs.

Cutting the tree into more manageable pieces.

Next Passang and several friends and family worked on digging out part of a hill to make the ground level.

This is what the field looked like before...

And this is it now.

Today the workers started nailing pieces of bamboo to the top of the classrooms for the beginning of the ceiling.

Passang's step-father putting up bamboo.

The ceiling will simply be made out of plastic, and then corrugated metal will go up for the roof.  

Then we will need windows, doors, and electricity, of course.

So here is the school so far!

Lillyfield Academy is almost ready to open her doors!

Christmas Decorating - Sikkim Style

It is always interesting to me to see how different western traditions and customs have been changed and adapted as they have been introduced over here, and decorating for Christmas was no exception.

The first step for Christmas decorating was to find a Christmas tree.  As there are no grocery stores around here with parking lots full of pre-cut trees and no tree farms with fields and fields of perfectly shaped trees ready to be cut, we had to search a bit harder to find our Christmas tree.  It is actually illegal here to cut down an entire tree, but limbs of trees are generally acceptable.  So I ventured into the forest with three of my nieces to try and find suitable limbs to make our Christmas trees.

My niece Snowly and I heading out with the sickle we're going to use to cut down our tree.

My niece Kasis and I.  She decided she also wanted to hold one of the sickles for a picture... and I decided that I wanted to get that picture over with quickly and get that sickle out of her hands!

We needed to find two Christmas trees – one for my house and one for my nieces Keran and Kasis’s house.  The first tree we found quite quickly.  We cut it down and set off to find another one.  

Snowly making the first cuts on the limb that is going to be our Christmas tree!

Me and our freshly cut tree

My niece Keran posing for a picture

My niece Kasis.  She's adorable!

Along the way my nieces started picking fern plants off of the forest floor.  Apparently these ferns have edible roots.  They cleaned some off and gave them to me to eat.  They were quite good.  Locally they are called “panni amalla” or “water amalla.”

Panni amalla

Kasis searching through roots to find some panni amalla

We continued on through the forest looking for a nice tree, but couldn't find a good one.  After several hours of looking (and a couple stops at friend’s and relative’s houses for refreshment along the way) we returned back to where we found the first tree and cut off a small branch to use as Keran and Kasis’s tree.  It wasn’t as nice as we wanted, but it worked.

Returning home with our trees

Our Christmas trees!!!

Around here they typically keep their Christmas tree outside, in front of the house.  We decided to put ours at the top of our stairs in an open-air passage.  Of course there are no Christmas tree stands over here, so instead we basically planted the tree in a metal container.

Getting ready to decorate the tree

Snowly digging up some dirt to plant the tree in

My sister in-law planting the tree

I brought my Christmas ornaments with me when I moved over here so we used those to decorate the tree.  Passang also now has a couple ornaments from my grandma and grandpa (they give all of us a new ornament every year) so he got to put those on.  We put lights on the tree and Snowly put bits of cotton to look like snow.  She also made a sign to put at the base.

Snowly putting cotton on the tree

Hanging ornaments

Our sign

Passang hanging his ornaments

Our finished Christmas tree!

Keran and Kasis's tree at their house

While Snowly and I were decorating the tree Passang was putting up the Christmas lights.  I was quite surprised by the way he put them up.  First he ran wire along the top of the house.  Then he put metal pins through the wire at the places he wanted to attach the lights.  He then taped the plugs of the Christmas lights to the pins.  In that way he was able to get electricity to all of the lights exactly where he wanted them.  It was totally jerry-rigged and kind of scared me, but it actually worked quite well!

Passang on our roof running wire for our Christmas lights

The pins that he stuck through the wires

Taping the Christmas light plugs to the pins

Hanging the lights

Christmas lights here are not usually strung along the edges of the houses here, as they are in the US.  Instead they hang them them straight down the house.

Our Christmas lights

Passang also put up a lit star at the top of a bamboo pole on top of our house.  The star is the most common Christmas decoration here.  If Christians do nothing else, they typically at least put up a star as high as they can that shines brightly at night.  Since most of the people in Sikkim are Buddhist or Hindu, it’s really pretty cool to see random stars dotting the landscape, signifying the families that have become Christian.

Our Christmas lights with our star on the top of our house

With our Christmas tree decorated, our Christmas lights strung, and our star shining at the top of our house, we were ready to celebrate Christmas!